


though hell should bar the way

by Medie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Babylon 5 fusion, Community: trope_bingo, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death of personality sentences normally only require one telepath to supervise.</p>
<p>Nothing about Hannibal Lecter could ever be called normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	though hell should bar the way

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'amnesia' square of my trope bingo

To some, the room is as silent as the tomb. She can hear more than one thinking about it as they walk into the room. The staff shoot wary looks their way, cautious, but it's a long while before anyone even considers speaking.

"How many of these have you attended?" someone asks. One of the doctors, perhaps the one standing at the iv stand with a bag in one hand and the line in the other.

Clarice doesn't turn her head. She also doesn't answer. She can hear the thoughts tumbling over and over in his head, the questions he's afraid to ask mixed up with the minutiae of the day and the weekend that will follow. He's trying to focus on the latter, but it's the former that dominate his mind. It's not her first, but it is his. He's afraid, as much of their presence as that of the man on the table, and it sours the room around him like old sweat and rancid meat.

"Wipes, I mean," he elaborates. "You guys come standard on these things, right? He's really not going to remember a thing?" He coughs, clears his throat, and tries again. "I mean, he won't remember who he was, what he did, or anything, right?"

"He won't remember you were here," she says, and gives him her back to focus on the sweet, siren song clarity of the man they're attending and the blank wall beyond him. To do this right, she'll need focus and she won't find that in the jumbled thoughts of a nervous doctor.

At least not that one. 

Lifting her gaze, she takes in the rumpled blue plaid sneaking out from beneath Will Graham's equally rumpled coat. It takes effort to hide the smile. Psi Corps telepaths do not smile on duty. The thought catches her off guard and she barely holds back the laugh.

He shifts, restless, from one foot to the other, but she catches the faint glimmer of a smile. This isn't his first, either, but this is the only one that will matter. The only one they'll carry with them.

This is the last.

She takes a measured breath, then another, counting off the seconds until she feels the wall around Will crack open.

To the people around her, the mundanes as some would say, nothing changes. To Clarice, however, it's not unlike being swallowed by a hurricane. She sways on her feet and battles back, diverting and controlling the windstorm of his thoughts.

Across from her, Graham's scarred face curls up in a faint mimicry of a grin. _Sorry_.

Compared to the onslaught, it's a light breeze whispering into her mind. It's instinct to pounce on it and anchor herself, but her training overrides it. It's an old exercise to narrow her focus, whittle away at it until that one word expands into her consciousness and blocks out the rest.

_Better,_ Will says, his amusement infusing the word with his unvoiced laughter. He settles into her awareness in such a way that she realizes he's drawing on her control. He doesn't apologize. She doesn't expect him to. _I've never been very good at this._

She's never been anything but. Remembers the vague hint of her father's presence in her thoughts, the weight of his expectations, and knows that Will can see it too. She opens up to him, sharing the memory of her father's training until she senses the patterns of Hannibal's thoughts between them. He's out, lulled into unconsciousness by the weight of the drugs, but his mind is still a clarion call.

Listening, she wonders how even the people around her can't hear it. She can't imagine living in such silence.

Clarice looks down at him, knows without looking that Will does the same, and curls her fingers tight. The urge to reach for Hannibal is difficult to suppress and she circles around the bed, feels the brush of his hair against the back of her hand.

As though she weren't wearing the gloves that mark her to the mindblind around her. Clarice has never particularly minded life in the Corps, nor resented the distance the badge and gloves enforce on her, but she's never disdained those outside it either.

She slips through the medical personnel and joins Will at his side.Neither of them look at the other and the staff around them shoot cautious looks in their direction. Death of personality sentences normally only require one telepath to supervise.

Nothing about Hannibal Lecter could ever be called normal. If they could, neither Clarice nor Will would be standing at his side about to subvert every oath they've sworn.

_Do you think it's enough?_

Clarice is careful. She doesn't think of the suggestion she'd slipped into a technician's mind, burying it so deep that it will never be found, or the web that Will wove in Hannibal's thoughts, protecting the core of his identity from the drug cocktail and programming that will wipe the rest of his mind clean.

She doesn't think of anything that any passing telepath might overhear.

Neither does Will, but satisfaction settles around her like a warm blanket. Will is a singular talent among the Corps; his empathy so deep and profound that they'll be furious to lose him.

This time, she realizes the laughter bubbling up isn't hers. 

She risks a look sideways at him and sees the relaxation in his eyes. The Corps destroyed and rebuilt them both; so did Hannibal.

Which one is the greater evil isn't something Clarice can discern. Fortunate, then, that she isn't interested in trying.

She gets a glimpse of sunlight afternoons and warm stone, music on the wind intermixed with the barking of happy dogs.

_It's enough_ , Will agrees. _It has to be._


End file.
